The Philippines lags behind Asian neighbors in average Internet speed

If you’re looking for something to brag about our country, then you can forget about average Internet speeds. Currently on the top of the worldwide Internet speed ranking is South Korea at an average of 14.2Mbps, followed by other Asian countries Japan and Hong Kong.

This latest statistic comes from Akamai, a US-based Internet content delivery network, which has listed countries according to performance in Internet speeds during Q1 2013. As shown in the chart above, the top title belongs to South Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong, followed by countries in Europe. The United States, on the other hand, only ranks 9th in the global speed ranking. Still, it’s not too bad to enjoy an average of 8.6Mbps, which lets downloading a 2-hour high-definition movie possible in just an hour or less.

So where does the Philippines stand in the rankings? Akamai has us pegged at just an average of 1.4Mbps, an unfortunate number that even compares badly with the global average of 3.1Mbps. Filipinos can’t exactly blame it all on the local telcos, since the country itself is comprised of numerous islands that make it hard to deploy broadband networks.

Things, though, may change in the future as broadband adoption in the Philippines becomes more aggressive thanks to newer wireless technologies. Long Term Evolution (4G LTE) is a fine example as it allow speeds to go as high as 42Mbps or more. Many of the latest mobile devices (iPhone 5 and Samsung GS4) are already capable of LTE, giving Filipinos the opportunity for faster Internet speeds.